Monica Yepez, a well-known dentist and former UTEP cheerleader who successfully fought the courts for control of her estate after she was named a ward of the state in 2006, died Sunday -- the day before her 46th birthday.

Yepez's father, Alonzo Yepez Sr., said that the exact cause of death was unknown but that it was related to the ongoing health problems she developed after being partly paralyzed for the past five years.

Alonzo Yepez said Monica died at her East Side home, where she had been for the past two weeks after spending most of last year in the hospital because she had trouble breathing and had undergone a tracheotomy.

"She was tired, she was anxious, she was sick," her father said. "This was not her life -- that's not how she wanted to live. She was a go-go girl. She always wanted to be doing something."

Yepez, a graduate of Eastwood High School, was a University of Texas at El Paso cheerleader in the mid-1980s. After UTEP, she went on to dentistry school at the University of Texas at San Antonio before going to Baylor to specialize in pediatric dentistry.

She returned to El Paso in 1993 and practiced dentistry for 13 years.

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In 2006, Yepez went to the hospital because she was dehydrated. According to court records, fluids that were supposed to help her instead caused her brain to swell, resulting in paraplegia. She lost mobility and her ability to speak. The injury left her in a wheelchair and caused her to gain more than 100 pounds.

"Everyone was expecting me to die," Monica Yepez said during an interview with the El Paso Times in 2009. "I could hear everything they would say about me, but I couldn't respond."

Because her assets were valued at $1.1 million, she and her estate were put into a state guardianship so that no one would take advantage of her, she was later told.

In 2009, she regained the use of her hands and her ability to speak.

That is when she began petitioning the court, asking for the right to control her finances. She also requested a full accounting of her estate, including the sale of her $600,000 home on the West Side.

After undergoing several physical and mental evaluations, the state dissolved her guardianship in October 2009. From then on, her $11,000-a-month disability check went straight to her.

"She was so happy that day," her father said. "She got control of her life back. That is all she wanted."

Monica Yepez used her money to have her house remodeled, to buy new furniture and to buy clothes. And she traveled whenever possible, her father said.

"That is Monica," he said. "She loved life and she liked to shop."

Monica's friend Brenda Mendoza said Monica will be remembered for being a genuine person.